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Op-Ed by Victoria Higgins, CCAN Action Fund’s Virginia Director, initially published in Richmond Times Dispatch.

Recently, NextEra CEO John Ketchum joined President Donald Trump in the Oval Office to celebrate a $54 billion investment in a new gas pipeline in Alaska. In his remarks, Mr. Ketchum said Trump has done an “amazing” job on energy.

Really?

If NextEra welcomes Trump’s energy policies, Virginians have cause to be concerned about the Florida-based company’s proposed acquisition of Dominion Energy.

Donald Trump promised voters he would cut electricity prices in half within 18 months; instead, by that deadline, residential rates had climbed at twice the rate of inflation. This was not bad luck; it was policy. His signature tax law gutted the clean energy credits that were bringing the cheapest new power onto the grid, and Rhodium Group projects that this move alone will push the national average household energy bill up by $78–$192 a year by 2035. Then Trump launched a war with Iran, choking off the Strait of Hormuz through which a fifth of the world’s LNG flows. The Pentagon estimates this has already cost $29 billion.

In a move so transparently ideological it’s nearly satirical, the administration has now agreed to pay more than $2.5 billion in taxpayer money to developers just to walk away from their offshore wind leases — after courts blocked Trump’s earlier attempts to kill the industry outright. That’s money spent to guarantee less power: offshore wind would have saved regional ratepayers roughly $400 million last winter. Estimates suggest that canceling the five major East Coast projects the administration tried to halt would add $45 billion to the bills over the next decade.

It’s all well and good for Mr. Ketchum. NextEra’s John Ketchum took home $24.2 million the same year Florida regulators approved a record $6.9 billion rate hike for its Florida Power & Light subsidiary. He is hellbent on “winning the AI race” and proudly brags that his company is spending a billion dollars a week to build the energy infrastructure to get there. And he’s not alone: 51 investor-owned electric and gas companies paid their CEOs a combined $626 million in 2025, while everyday families struggled to keep the lights on while putting food on the table. The numbers paint a picture of two Americas: nearly all (98%) Dominion shareholders voted in favor of handing the keys to Virginia’s energy future to NextEra. In contrast, 3 in 4 Virginia voters (76%) said the merger will raise electricity costs.

All of this makes it very clear to me: NextEra is not here out of a benevolent desire to achieve “capital and operating efficiencies” to the benefit of Virginia ratepayers. It is here to win the AI race, and the company is willing to shake hands with the Trump administration to do so. And if its track record in Florida is any indication, I worry it may be willing to go further than shaking hands.

Though the companies tried to withhold the document, a Virginia regulatory hearing examiner recently ordered Dominion and NextEra to release the infamous “Robo memo” to intervenors, which details an investigation into subsidiary Florida Power & Light’s alleged illegal political conduct in the Sunshine State. Among the allegations are that the company funded ghost candidates to spoil elections and surveilled journalists. While NextEra agreed to settle a related shareholder lawsuit and was never formally charged, the regulators’ choice to force the release of the memo in the merger proceeding is good news. It is an acknowledgment that political conduct is relevant to the companies’ ability to ensure just and reasonable rates.

Virginians won’t get a vote on whether to approve the merger, so they’re counting on regulators to read the fine print and the secret memos very, very closely. That due diligence should include the question: If NextEra thinks the last two years of Trump’s energy policy have been “amazing,” what does it have in store for Virginia?

Op-Ed by Victoria Higgins, CCAN Action Fund’s Virginia Director, initially published in Richmond Times Dispatch.

About the author: Victoria Higgins is the Virginia Director for CCAN Action Fund. Her career in environmental advocacy began with Green Corps, a rigorous training program for environmental organizers.

She worked on campaigns with Mighty Earth, Conservation Colorado, and Environment Virginia to hold corporate polluters accountable, pass state climate policy, and limit plastic pollution in Virginia’s waterways.

She received a Master of Science in Energy Policy and Climate at Johns Hopkins University. 

The post NextEra Support for Trump Energy Policies Is a Concern  appeared first on Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

By Denise Robbins, CCAN Communications Team

Across Maryland, communities are hitting the brakes on the rapid buildout of massive data centers.

After Anne Arundel County joined the growing list of jurisdictions adopting a temporary moratorium, roughly 90% of Marylanders now live in a county or city with some form of data center ban or pause, according to CCAN Action Fund’s latest tally. The movement now stretches from Western Maryland to the Eastern Shore and across the state’s largest population centers.

Largo, Prince George’s County Data Center Rally on July 1, 2026

And Maryland is not alone. Across the country, opposition to rapid data center expansion is growing as communities confront concerns about electricity demand, utility bills, water use, noise, land use, and environmental impacts. Recent national polling has found a full seven of ten Americans oppose data centers being built in their area. 

Why communities are pressing pause

The scale of the AI boom is difficult to overstate. AI data centers require enormous amounts of electricity, and many also require significant amounts of water for cooling. In the PJM region, which includes Maryland, rapidly rising data center demand is already threatening grid reliability and infrastructure costs, with many fear these costs being passed onto ratepayers. 

Meanwhile, the rules designed to protect ratepayers, water supplies, local communities, and the climate are still catching up.

That is why so many local governments have chosen temporary pauses. Communities need time to understand the consequences and put enforceable safeguards in place.

Governor Moore acted — but Maryland still hasn’t paused

In mid-September, Maryland Governor Wes Moore said he would “absolutely sign” a statewide data center moratorium if it came to his desk. And yet he issued an executive order one week later that included no mention of a moratorium. 

Instead it created a new statewide framework for reviewing large data center projects. The order created a Maryland Data Center Task Force, required greater transparency and stronger criteria around proposed projects, barred state employees from entering certain nondisclosure agreements with developers, and established principles around ratepayer protection, economic benefits, community input, environmental impacts, and accountability.

Baltimore City Data Center Moratorium Rally June 29, 2026.

Those are meaningful reforms, but it’s not enough. On top of ignoring a statewide moratorium, Governor Moore’s order also did not establish a requirement that new data centers operate on 100% clean energy.

How can Maryland continue approving massive new projects while the state is still developing the rules meant to govern them?

The risks don’t stop at electricity and water

Concerns about AI extend far beyond electricity and water. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 62% of respondents viewed AI as capable of endangering humanity’s future, while leading AI researchers and technology executives have publicly warned that advanced AI could pose catastrophic risks.

Those long-term risks are still being debated. But one thing is already clear: the physical infrastructure powering the AI boom is arriving now, in real communities, with real consequences, and not enough has been done to protect us from those consequences. 

How to Fight Back: Join Marylanders from across the state on November 7 Frederick Amazon Data Center Rally in Adamstown on May 28, 2026

On Saturday, November 7, CCAN and Nature Forward will bring Marylanders together at the Baltimore Convention Center for People Over Data Centers: Maryland Action Summit.

The one-day conference will feature Congressman Jamie Raskin, climate activist and author Bill McKibben, state and local elected officials, environmental-justice leaders, community organizers, and advocates from across Maryland. Panels will cover data center impacts on electricity bills and the grid, water resources, farmland and open space, environmental justice, AI risks, and what stronger statewide safeguards could look like in 2027.

The summit runs from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, and a $25 general-admission ticket (or $15 for students) includes morning coffee and lunch. 

The fight against Maryland’s data center boom is already statewide. November 7 is a chance to bring those local fights together, learn from one another, and decide what comes next. Learn more and sign up for the People Over Data Centers: Maryland Action Summit!

Sign up for the People Over Data Centers Summit here

The post Maryland’s Data Center Backlash Is Growing. Here’s What Comes Next appeared first on Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

By Quentin Scott, Federal Policy Director, Chesapeake Climate Action Network

Not long ago, conversations about solar reflective methods (SRM) were dominated by one question: How do we stop it? At this year’s Climate Week NYC, we heard a different one: How do we make sure research into this emerging climate technology is done responsibly? 

Nearly 100 scientists, policymakers, advocates, students, skeptics, and supporters came together for Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN)’s SRM Research Hub Crawl to grapple with what responsible research into and governance of SRM could look like. The concerns haven’t disappeared, and they shouldn’t. But as climate impacts grow harder to ignore, people are increasingly willing to move beyond debating whether SRM should exist and start asking how we can responsibly explore its potential to help protect our planet.

That’s what happened on Wednesday, September 23, when CCAN hosted our SRM Research Hub Crawl: Building a Community for Responsible Research and Governance. People across sectors showed up to discuss responsible research into SRM techniques. Such an event would have been hard to imagine in years past, but it showed us how the public is hungry for oversight over responsible research into SRM as climate change becomes harder to ignore.

Why This Conversation Can’t Wait

Let me be clear about where CCAN stands: solar reflective methods are not a substitute for rapidly cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Full stop. We’re still fighting for clean energy alternatives, and against every rollback of climate progress.

Climate change is already forcing hard choices on communities, but policy isn’t keeping pace. Meanwhile, SRM research is growing—whether or not we’re comfortable with it. That doesn’t mean deployment is inevitable, and it certainly doesn’t mean it’s desirable. It means the public deserves a transparent, inclusive conversation about what research is happening, what we still don’t know, and what safeguards would be required if this technology ever were to be deployed.

If that conversation doesn’t happen, the public is left in the dark. With climate change making the road ahead even harder to see, the public needs to move back into the driver’s seat.

Not Your Typical Convening

Most SRM discussions happen in technical and academic settings, with the usual insiders. We wanted to open up the conversation, so we brought it to the bar with our first-ever “Hub Crawl.”

Participants moved between interactive hubs hosted by partner organizations. One hub dug into the science of SRM. Another explored emerging governance frameworks. Others tackled policy debates and what meaningful public engagement should look like. People with very different views on SRM—from supporters to skeptics—engaged directly with the research and the governance challenges around it.

Ben Kalina, director and producer of the Plan C For Civilization documentary, said the SRM field has always been “dangerously shrouded in mystery,” dominated by a small number of researchers and personalities. He called the event fun:“Standing on the roof, talking about the earth’s reflectivity, it was like a sci-fi mini-convention sharing what we’ve learned—and what we don’t know—with a curious and questioning Climate Week community,” he said.

I’ll take it. Serious doesn’t have to mean stuffy.

Different Perspectives, Shared Questions

This year’s Climate Week took place after a record-shattering summer, on the heels of the hottest month ever recorded and 12 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters. Our co-host, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS),  pointed to urgency. Dr. Hannah Safford, FAS’s Associate Director of Climate and Environment, pointed to glacier collapse and flash flooding in the Himalayas and unbearable heat around the world. “We owe it to ourselves, our neighbors, and our kids,” she said, “to rigorously, responsibly explore tools like SRM that could help reduce climate risks, even as we continue to ramp up mitigation and adaptation.”

The organizations that joined us don’t all agree with one another, and that was the point: the Federation of American Scientists, University of Chicago, Reflective, Degrees Initiative, Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering, Environmental Defense Fund, Plan C For Civilization Documentary, and SRM360. Thank you to every one of them who attended and shared their views. 

Research Is Not Deployment

I say this often, and I’ll keep saying it: CCAN does not support SRM deployment. We do support studying whether it could work, what the risks are, who would be affected, and who gets a say. Those are responsible questions, and we need answers before other nations or private companies make those decisions for us.

Decisions about whether, how, and under what conditions research proceeds should be shaped by rigorous science, strong safeguards, and public accountability. Most of all, they should be shaped by the people most affected by climate change, not by whoever has the most money or the loudest voices.

Earlier this year, we watched lawmakers in statehouses across the country push bills to ban even the study of these technologies, many built on conspiracy theories rather than evidence. Banning research doesn’t make the technologies disappear. It just ensures we won’t have the full picture if it ever comes time to make a decision.

Climate Week’s Hub Crawl showed an alternative path: a room full of people from all backgrounds, willing to ask hard questions in public, backed by scientific research.

What Comes Next

Responsible SRM research is no longer a fringe topic in the climate community. As the climate crisis intensifies and policy lags, SRM is moving onto the agenda. The real question is who will be in the room when decisions get made.

If scientists, advocates, and affected communities don’t show up, a small number of people who have their own agendas will fill that space.

CCAN will keep bringing people together and pushing for SRM research that is transparent, publicly accountable, and governed by strong safeguards. We’ll also keep fighting for the cuts in carbon pollution that nothing else can replace.

If you’re curious, skeptical, or both—good. Join us. We’d love to hear from you.

Sign up to volunteer with CCAN!

About the author: Quentin Scott (he/him) joined CCAN in January 2021 as part of the newly created CCAN Federal Team. He moved from Chicago specifically to build political will for groundbreaking national climate and climate justice policies. Growing up on the South Side of Chicago, he got a first-hand look at the two Americas and sought to bring the two Americas closer together through advocacy.

Before joining CCAN, Quentin was chief of staff for an Illinois State Representative and a legislative correspondent in the US House of Representatives, and has led numerous issue and candidate campaigns across the Midwest and East Coast. In his roles, he has stood with neighborhood groups to hold industrial polluters accountable in communities of color and looks forward to bringing that fight to the federal level.

The post The SRM Conversation Is Growing: Nearly 100 Scientists, Advocates, and Skeptics Showed Up to Claim Their Seat appeared first on Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

Climate group warns Virginia families could be left footing the bill for Big Tech’s power grab if merger goes through

RICHMOND, VA — The staff of Virginia’s State Corporation Commission (SCC) recommended on Monday that regulators deny NextEra Energy’s proposed $67 billion acquisition of Dominion Energy as currently proposed, concluding that the companies have not proven that “adequate service to the public at just and reasonable rates will not be impaired or jeopardized.” The same day, Governor Abigail Spanberger filed expert testimony urging the SCC to reject the deal unless NextEra and Dominion agree to freeze base residential rates for six years, triple customer bill credits, and accept structural reforms to ensure “large data centers bear the cost of their own energy needs — not families.”

In testimony filed yesterday, SCC staff found that the merger would expose Dominion to the financial and business risks of NextEra’s unregulated, competitive businesses. Staff also flagged Dominion’s growing dependence on buying power from the regional market – 25% of the electricity it supplied in 2025, compared with 3% at NextEra’s Florida Power & Light – and noted that rising purchased power costs “appear to stem from growth in data center customers.” The companies’ proposed $10-a-month residential bill credit would “only somewhat mitigate” steadily rising bills, staff concluded. When the credits run out in 2031, a typical residential bill is projected to jump nearly 8% in a single year, to $226.55 a month.

Victoria Higgins, Virginia Director of Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN), issued the following statement:

“Yesterday, the Commission’s own experts and the Governor of Virginia corroborated what families across the Commonwealth have been saying: this merger is a bad deal for Virginia. NextEra isn’t coming to Virginia to lower anyone’s bills. It’s coming to cash in on the largest data center market in the world, and it’s counting on ordinary Virginians to bankroll the buildout.

The byzantine corporate structure that would be spawned by this acquisition exposes regulated customers in Virginia to immense risk, particularly as we face an onslaught of infrastructure requests from data centers. A temporary $10 credit is a rounding error next to the billions in new power plants and market purchases needed to feed Big Tech. The SCC should listen to its staff and reject this merger.”

SCC staff said it would not oppose the merger if the companies accept a lengthy list of additional conditions, including an independent Dominion board of directors, limits on dividends, a 10-year guarantee of current Virginia employment levels, and a requirement that Dominion retain “ultimate decision-making authority” over how it meets demand from large load customers. Governor Spanberger, the first Virginia governor to intervene in an SCC case, said she remains “deeply skeptical” that the merger, “as currently structured, will adequately protect consumers.” Earlier this month, Lt. Governor Ghazala Hashmi became the first statewide elected official to flatly oppose the deal. Last week, Dominion’s 2026 Integrated Resource Plan update projected that a typical residential bill would climb by more than $100 a month over the next two decades, driven in large part by data center demand.

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Chesapeake Climate Action Network is the first grassroots organization dedicated exclusively to raising awareness about the impacts and solutions associated with global warming in the Chesapeake Bay region. Founded in 2002, CCAN has been at the center of the fight for clean energy and wise climate policy in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC.

The post SCC Staff Right to Recommend Merger Denial as Data Center Costs Mount appeared first on Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

Typical bills climb by over $100 a month as data centers demand more energy

RICHMOND, VA — Dominion Energy’s newly filed 2026 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) update projects that the utility’s carbon pollution will more than double compared to last year’s plan while customer bills climb steadily for the next two decades. Under the IRP’s “preferred path” that the company submitted to Virginia’s State Corporation Commission (SCC), a typical residential bill for 1,000 kilowatt-hours would rise from $180.31 to $283.65 a month – an increase of more than $100 – as Dominion pursues nearly 9,000 megawatts of new gas-fired generation and six small modular nuclear reactors to meet a demand forecast driven in large part by new data centers. The company estimates its preferred plan will cost $91.5 billion, costs that will be passed on to customers through their electric rates.

Dominion’s preferred plan ignores state requirements on at least three accounts. While the update increases planned solar and battery storage over last year’s plan, the battery targets fall well short of recent statutory requirements (SB 448 / HB 895, 2026). Dominion’s calculations do not appear to square with Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative requirements targeting zero tons of greenhouse gas emissions from large power plants by 2045. In addition, Dominion’s preferred path would keep its fossil fuel plants running past 2045, the date by which the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) requires them to close. Dominion now forecasts demand rising 2.8% a year, up from 2.5% in last year’s update, and expects its preferred path to emit 47 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2046 – up from 21.8 million in last year’s plan.

Victoria Higgins, Virginia Director of Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN), issued the following statement:

“With every new energy plan, Dominion gives up a little more on the planet and jacks up rates a little higher to serve data centers. Now, as Dominion awaits a decision on NextEra’s proposed acquisition, it plans to double its pollution while the typical family’s bill climbs by more than $100 a month. 

Communities will see this plan for what it really is: a blueprint for billions of dollars in new gas plants to chase Big Tech’s appetite for power. The SCC must hold Dominion to the clean energy laws on the books, and Virginia leaders must rein in data center growth before it drains all of our natural resources, further punishes the poor and destroys the middle class.”

In July 2025, the SCC directed Dominion to model at least one scenario fully aligned with the VCEA, including the scheduled retirement of its fossil fuel plants. Dominion’s update sets that path aside in favor of a preferred plan that keeps gas burning. The preferred plan’s gas buildout does not even count the roughly 5 Gigawatts of gas plants Dominion has already proposed in Chesterfield and Cumberland counties. The update arrives as Dominion and NextEra seek state approval for a proposed merger that would create the largest regulated utility monopoly in the world.

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Chesapeake Climate Action Network is the first grassroots organization dedicated exclusively to raising awareness about the impacts and solutions associated with global warming in the Chesapeake Bay region. Founded in 2002, CCAN has been at the center of the fight for clean energy and wise climate policy in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC.

The post Dominion’s Updated Energy Plan Doubles Pollution as it Prepares to Merge with NextEra appeared first on Chesapeake Climate Action Network.